Suicide remains a leading cause of death among young people in Western Australia, with significant individual, community, and societal challenges. In response to this, there is an urgent need for effective, relevant, and accessible mental health services for young people. Youth Focus, Western Australia’s leading youth mental health organisation, is dedicated to enhancing the mental health of young people through its eight metropolitan and regional centres, as well as its role as the lead agency of four headspace centres across the state. Our vision is to ensure that young people’s mental health does not get in the way of who they want to be. Central to our approach is integrating young people’s perspectives and lived experiences into our service model. To this end, we conducted a multi-site focus group co-designed and co-facilitated with Consultants with research expertise and lived experience. This initiative aimed to capture direct insights from young people about their mental health care and to understand their expected and actual outcomes of accessing our services. The focus group consisted of young people accessing Youth Focus and headspace services across our metropolitan and regional centres. Based on a reflexive thematic analysis, we identified several critical themes related to young people’s mental health care, with implications on how to strengthen early intervention and suicide prevention efforts for this population. Specifically, young people emphasised the importance of integrating lived experience in all aspects of service design, delivery, and evaluation. They also expressed a strong desire for autonomy in their treatment choices, underscoring the need for clear, accessible information about service options to empower informed decision-making. Additionally, the focus group highlighted a need to reduce the stigma associated with mental illnesses and help-seeking behaviours, as well as the importance of fostering more positive attitudes towards accessing mental health support. The outcomes and impacts identified in this focus group were triangulated with insights from various staff workshops across the organisation. This comprehensive validation process has contributed to the development of Youth Focus’s first Outcome and Impact Measurement Framework. This robust, evidence-based document will guide our future work, ensuring that our interventions remain effective and responsive to the needs of young people.